


selene

by socordia



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Gen, everything is different AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-08-11 10:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7887181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socordia/pseuds/socordia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princess Selene Blackburn of Luna was raised to be nothing more than a figurehead to her Aunt Levana ruthless reign. She, however, is faced with a choice: to bring down her tyrannical aunt and free the people she loves or to acquiesce to Levana's brutality. Soon she realizes she does not have much of a choice at all: her people deserve better than this.</p><p>(a collection of short stories of how everything would have played out if levana hadn't succeeded in killing her niece and raised her in her court, instead.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**prologue - devil's advocate.**

Queen Levana, Regent of Luna, has her stepdaughter’s hand firmly grasped between her own. They walk in a hurry, Winter’s small legs barely catching up with Levana’s nervous strides, and when they reach the medical wing, Queen Levana has her breath escaping shakily through her burned lips. Her glamour, however, shows a very different picture: she’s regal and tall, skin flawless and hair impeccable, falling in long ebony curls up to her waist. Her face is expressionless as always, and she recognizes her bowing subjects with only the simplest of nods.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” the doctor’s secretary greets her with a nervous smile. Queen Levana remains silent. “Dr. Eliot will see you in a few moments. Please, sit down. Would the princess like anything?”

The sweetness in the woman’s voice makes Queen Levana sick to her stomach. She growls, but in her glamour she smiles, as Winter blinks her enormous eyes in the direction of the servant. Her stepdaughter smiles shyly, and soon she has a lollipop in her hands and is looking very much pleased with herself.

Queen Levana scoffs, but not in her glamour, and helps her stepdaughter to climb the chair of the waiting room.

“Be careful not to get any sugar in your dress, dearest,” she advises little Winter, with a knowing wink, the motion almost making her cringe. The girl nods enthusiastically and proceeds with great caution towards the candy.

Soon, stepmother and stepdaughter are invited to enter on Dr. Eliot’s office, and Queen Levana has the same natural and easy-practiced smile glued to her glamour. She lets Dr. Eliot works, answering her questions about Winter’s health in an automatic manner, her mind very distant from her actual task. Her fingers are intertwining with each other, in the kind of maniac dancing that makes her actions suspicious, but Queen Levana is so deep in her veiled panic that she does not notice the betrayal of her hands.

Rather, she has to concentrate in maintaining her glamour in place. She has to look like her usual self, distant from the frivolities of the normal folk, eyes attentive but, at the same time, preoccupied with trading and security matters. Winter is almost done with her appointment, and Dr. Eliot is reciting all that is completely normal with her stepdaughter, when they are suddenly interrupted by the doctor’s secretary.

The doctor’s face is painted with an ugly red and so is Queen Levana’s – but across her glamour, she just raises an eyebrow, the corner of her lips perking down, disapproving. The secretary is as pale as Lunar rock, her eyes darted with blood, her breathing unsteady. Queen Levana grabs the chair beneath her fingers and catches her breath.

_It is time._

“Dr. Eliot!,” the woman bellows, desperate. “You must come! There’s been a fire... Princess Selene...”

Queen Levana gasps, as expected, and rises to her feet in a single fluid motion.

“What’s happened to my niece?!” She demands, like she doesn’t know already. Her stomach is turning on itself, tying knots so severe she doesn’t think will ever go away. The seconds feel like years, and Queen Levana’s eyes dart to the doctor from the secretary a thousand times. “Dr. Eliot, please, go tend to my niece and our future queen.” Queen Levana imprints a begging edge to her request, and frees the way so the doctor can leave. “We will be right behind you.”

The doctor and her secretary leap from their places and Queen Levana can hear them running through hallways, too-loud voices of servants and guards plastered throughout the walls of the wing. She clenches her jaw and looks down to gaze at Winter, that has been frozen in her too-big of a chair, huge eyes locked on Levana.

“Something happened to Sal?”

The use of her niece’s pet name – given to her by no other than Queen Levana’s own husband – makes a chill crawl through her spine, sending goosebumps all over her arms. Queen Levana chews at her lower lip, the motion quite visible to her stepdaughter’s untrained eyes, and she nods, harshly.

“Yes, and we must leave to make sure she is fine,” Queen Levana pleads, handing Winter her little shoes. “Get ready, Winter.”

There is a harshness in her tone that is forever present when Winter fails to comply to any of her requests. The sharp turn in her voice is there also when she looks at Winter, doing the most banal things, like putting her shoes, in the most graceful manner, like she was born to be a princess. Just like her mother had behaved, when she was alive.

Scowling, Levana grabs Winter by the hand a little more roughly than she intends, but the child does not complain. They make their way back to the royal quarters in silence, followed not only by her guards but also by servants and members of the court, who whisper and speculate, none of them even daring to look at Queen Levana and her stepdaughter. When they do, the pity she recognizes in their eyes and features makes her throat coarse with the need to scream.

She smells the smoke before she sees the commotion, and she stops to a halt. Her guards follow her motion as they should, and Queen Levana breathes deeply while her heart races, the smell attaching itself to her skin like a piece of clothing. She coughs and presses her bad eye with her free hand, Winter’s voice asking if everything is fine.

No answers comes out of her lips. Instead, she keeps moving forward. In fact, Queen Levana is so focused on her task of reaching the nursery, to see if all her plotting has been successful, that she only sees her husband when he is by her side, taking Winter on his arms.

“Sweetheart, I think you should stay here.” His voice is all smooth and concerned, his eyes glinting with what Levana recognizes as tears. Winter hides her face in her father’s neck, and Queen Levana wishes she could do the same.

“No, I have to see her,” she whispers, her hands trembling. “She’s my niece.”

_I have to be certain._

“Daddy, what is wrong with Sal?,” Winter demands, so deep in her own hair Levana can barely discern her words.

“She’s hurt, my star.”

The word _hurt_ sends a wave of nausea through Queen Levana’s body, and she’s lucky Evret is here to help her steady. His eyes are so full of pity Levana feels she’s on the verge of tears. _Hurt? Not dead?_ She tells herself that he’s only saying that not to alarm Winter, that she can’t be that unlucky, that ruling Luna is not evading her grasp through her fingertips.

Queen Levana breathes deeply and longly, and picks up her desperate pace again. The people on the corridor make way to their regent, and she knows her face screams hurt and murder, but not for the reasons anyone would expect. She can even put the smell and the smoke and the horrible grey colours that offend her senses to the back of her mind, because now she has got to concentrate.

She takes a peak of the nursery, and it is not as ruined as she hopes it would be. The playhouse Selene would be sleeping in, however, is just a pile of debris, and a rueful fire burns at the pit of her stomach, soon to be replaced by the flash of victory. The guards are doing their best to keep anyone who is not medical staff or royal family away from the disaster, and Levana just stands there, still and majestic like a statue of a Moon Goddess, her blood flow so loud in her ears she can’t even understand herself think.

“Where is Princess Selene?” Her voice is pure steel and fury. She needs to see her niece. Looking around the devastation, she sees a body covered by a long, white blanket: but that is the corpse of an adult, too tall to be Selene’s petit three-year-old form. _The nanny, then._ “Where is Dr. Eliot?”

“The princess was taken by Dr. Eliot to the hospital, Your Majesty,” the guard replies, with a hint of sadness in his voice. She turns to face him, and whatever is scattered in her features makes him take a step back. “She said she had to hurry, in order to save the princess.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“That she was hopeful our princess would recover.”

Queen Levana’s lips are pressed in a very thin line. She turns on her heels and comes to find Evret, embracing a sobbing Winter.

“We need to go to the hospital.”

“Oh?”

“Doctor Eliot took Selene there.” Levana stops to take a deep breath, to organize her thoughts and feelings. “Selene might live.”

Evret completely misunderstands the grief in her tone and in her face, but he embraces her as gently as he holds Winter, and whispers in her ear, “She _will_ live.”

When Levana cries, her tears are for the future that never will be. She knows, in the arms of her caring and loving husband, that she has lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this is just the beginning! i hope you guys had as much fun reading as i had writing. feedback is always welcome and i plan to update this weekly. :) cheers!


	2. the name of the rose

**one - the name of the rose.**

Princess Selene lives.

The _quality_ of the life salvaged from the fire, however, is a completely different subject. Winter understands little of the adults’ talk: she only knows her cousin is alive and that she is not allowed to see her. She demands to see Selene, still, on a daily basis, and gets vague updates. Jacin is worried too, because Selene is his friend as well, but he isn’t quite as stubborn as Winter.

Well, Jacin isn’t a princess; Winter is. She knows she can ask for more just because of who is her mother. Not that she is seeing her mother frequently: she is way too busy for it, having to do whatever it is that queens do. Also, her mother is allowed to visit Selene, so she has that much excuses to not see Winter. Winter misses the time when her mother used to take her to doctor’s appointments or sat by the lake, seeing her and Selene and Jacin play, but she so rarely spends any time with her mother anymore that she is beginning to forget what Queen Levana looks like...

The months pass by as morose as Winter’s playtime with her nannies. Selene is not there to keep her company when Jacin isn’t allowed to enter. She has to entertain herself as well as she can, and she finds out she loves to play princess with her nannies. Winter suddenly has much more nannies than before: three, in total, that sit around in the nursery all day, their eyes always following Winter’s every move.

Her mother was really upset about Selene’s accident, so she made sure nothing of the sort would ever happen to Winter as well. That was comforting, but it also made Winter uneasy: she likes solitude. She likes to sit all on her own, combing her dolls’ hair, changing their clothes, reading stories and drawing on what she can. The nannies never leave Winter to her own business, and when she complains about it to her dad, he explains that they are only worried about Winter’s safety.

Yet, she wants to see Selene. She wants to show Selene the beautiful gown her mother purchased for her last birthday; she wants to sing to Selene the latest ballad she learned from her music lessons; she wants Selene to see what her sloppy handwriting looks like. But her cousin and best friend is kept hidden, away from her and for anyone that is not the doctors and Winter’s parents.

“How is Sal, Daddy?,” Winter asks, one dinner, darting her legs up and down at the floor, too distant from her feet from where she is sitting, in one of the tall, thin chairs of good Lunar timber. Her plate is almost entirely empty, with the exception of some of those nasty broccoli, that taste like dirt. “When can I see her?”

“Your cousin in getting better, my star.” Evret’s eyes are on his daughter’s face full of warmth and sympathy, and Winter is glad her mother isn’t here: she can have her dad all to herself. “Perhaps more a couple of months and she’ll be able to receive visitors.”

Winter blinks and nods, not understanding.

“But I though you already visited her, Daddy.”

Her father lets go a deep tired sigh, and Winter shivers when she sees the look on his face. It is much more than simple exhaustion from his shift as a royal guard, and she knows it. He has been this way since her cousin was taken to the hospital, and Winter knows that he cares deeply about Sal. She thinks this is a good thing, also: Selene is her sister in every sense of the word, except in blood, and she has no parents of her own. Winter would gladly lend Sal hers.

“And I do.”

The silence that follows is full of incompletion, and her father’s mouth is doing that thing in which he wants to talk but does not know what to say. Winter waits, poking her nasty leftover dinner with her spoon and tries not to hurry her dad. She knows that if she keeps pressuring him, he’ll slip away and leave her without answers. But Winter also fears that this will be it: this is all the update she’ll get about Selene for the next few weeks, and the thought makes her stomach turn.

“Daddy?”

“Hm.” He looks at Winter and she sees sadness in his eyes. Winter pushes her huge chair away from the table the best she can, jumping onto the floor and skipping to her father’s side. Evret’s smile does not feel natural, and she smiles brightfully at him so he can learn how to do it. “It is... complicated, Winter.”

“How so, Daddy? All I want to do is talk to Sal.”

“I know, dear. And I know she’s been in that hospital far too long... Almost two years, really. But you have to understand...” He pauses and Winter can see uncertainty in his face. “Selene’s been hurt very badly.”

“Because of the fire.”

“Yes, because of the fire.”

“Is that why we don’t have permission to have _real_ fire on the palace, Daddy?”

“Yes, it is. You remember the fire, don’t you?”

“I remember the smell.” Winter wrinkles her nose in remembrance. The smell was everywhere, grey and red and acidic. It glued itself on her clothes and shoes, and even when they were washed, the smell was still there. Winter never wore that dress again. “I remember seeing mother cry. And there was so much noise.”

Evret licks his lips and embraces Winter more tightly. Her hair would get all blowzy and tangled, but she doesn’t mind. She loves when her father lets her sit on his lap.

“Selene almost died that day, my star.” Winter nods. She’s heard as much from the nannies and the servants. She is forever grateful that she did not lose her cousin to the fire. “And the doctors are still fixing her. It is not as bad as it could be, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to get Sal back.” He clears his throat and Winter knows that she must prepare herself for what comes next. “She lost a leg and a hand, and the doctors are doing whatever they can to make sure that she will be able to live a normal, happy life when she wakes up.”

Winter’s eyes are as wide as the plates in front of her. She did not know Sal had suffered so much! All the more reason for her father to allow her to see her cousin: to keep her company, make her feel safe and loved, even if Selene is sleeping.

“I heard the servants say she was born again in the day of the fire.”

Her father’s chuckle lacks the usual humour he sports wherever he goes.

“It can be said so.”

“So, does Sal get a new name?”

That throws Evret out of the track for a while. His eyebrows get all wrinkly, and he shifts Winter in his lap, so she can be more comfortable.

“Excuse me?”

“Whenever babies are born, they get a name, don’t they? Well, if Sal is reborn, she should get a new name too! To celebrate her new life!”

Her father’s laughter, now, sound much more like himself: it shakes his shoulders and even Winter, that finds this little earthquake very amusing.

“Very well, I suppose that makes sense. What will we call Selene, then, when she wakes up?”

Winter thinks hard, chewing her lip in the process. Her chubby fingers find their way to some of her curls of brown hair and she slides them up and down, up and down again. This is a very great responsibility, to name someone else, so Winter is determined to make a good job. She always fancied herself very much successful when it came to name her dolls and her characters in her games with Jacin, so she believes she is up to the task.

She thinks of Selene and of how she remembers her cousin: laughing, full of energy, very curious and a little distrusting, Selene always knew how to make Winter laugh. And then, came the fire, and she hasn’t seen Sal since then...

Winter gasps when she stumbles across the perfect name, in her mental babbling. She opens a big smile and lets go of her hair, that jumps into the air before settling itself on her head rather unprincesslike.

“Cinder! We should call her ‘Cinder’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here it is! it was very fun writing little winter and i hope you guys enjoyed it. :)


	3. roman holiday

**two - roman holiday.**  

When she is with Winter, Cinder does not have to worry about being noticed.

She is carrying herself in her invisible glamour as well, so her prosthetics are hidden behind the illusion of bioelectricity, which would most definitely betray her true identity. The glamour she wears is fairly simple, clearly full of inspiration from the servants from Artemisia Palace, but not so obvious, in order to make Cinder unrecognizable to the eyes of her people.

Cinder would hate if she was mistaken for someone’s loved one who happened to work at the palace – it would completely defeat her purpose of wearing a glamour, after all, and she would most likely panic. Because of that, she spent days observing her servants and handmaidens, analyzing features and scanning faces, making mental notes and crafting her own glamour, her very own person, unique like every Lunar citizen.

Most important of all, her glamour is of a peasant. She’s here just in case Princess Winter needs anything, and also because Jacin is a danger to people who dare to come within twenty feet of her cousin and he really needs to be put on watch. He still has that impeccable posture of his, the silver in his hair tingling beneath the artificial lights, his eyes grey as rock and always vigilant.

Cinder worries that he is paying _too much_ attention and that would give the girls few opportunities to mingle. Winter was always allowed to go behind the palace walls, as long as she was accompanied by a guard (usually her own father), and Cinder always revelled on her cousin’s tales. When she asked her aunt if she could come to Winter to one of her strolls through the streets of Artemisia, Queen Levana snorted, disdainfully.

She said Cinder would only be allowed to leave her private quarters when she had managed to perfect her glamour. Cinder remembers being frozen in her chair, her gaze falling from her aunt’s gorgeous face and landing on the rosy patters of the porcelain in front of her. Aunt Levana is always cruel to Cinder when Uncle Evret is not around, and she knows better than to complain. That would only bring her more trouble, and in that horrendous dinner she found out she would be better off invisible.

So invisible she became. Invisible, and a bit sheepish, also: she discovered that being ignored by her aunt was much better than to be scolded by her; she realized that not showing her true, innate talent to the manipulation of bioelectricity would make her less noticeable; she found out that unnoticeable meant freedom. And freedom was something Cinder wanted very much, ever since she left the hospital to the extremely sheltered life her aunt had prepared for her.

Cinder is always eager to prove that she is much more than the disfigured girl that survived a horrible fire. She, however, has very little chance to do so; she can do nothing more than just sit around in her pretty dresses and wait for her aunt to bother to be reminded of her existence. Well, no more: she’s leaving the palace for the first time in... well, ever, and she’s with Winter and Jacin and everything will be fine.

No one is looking at her, anyway. Everyone is just so astounded by Winter’s presence that their eyes are closed on her cousin’s graceful walking and giggles. Cinder never quite understood how one can _laugh_ as prettily as Winter can, but her cousin sure makes it seem ridiculously easy. All Cinder has to do is hover quietly behind Winter, smiling and being out of the way, offering to carry gifts and assuring everyone that yes, Princess Winter is indeed the picture of kindness, even to her servants, even amongst the nobles.

It is not tiring, because she loves Winter and she loves to appraise her cousin’s qualities and charm, and it also giver Cinder the opportunity of watch how her subjects live. They make way to the princess into their homes fairly easily, and Jacin more than once has to cut a visit short, one look in his eyes of steel enough to hush any protests. Winter smiles and makes sure she learns every single name and memorizes every single face. She sings and teaches children to dance and listens to people with her huge, doe-like eyes, making them feel important.

They are important, of course. In the background, Cinder realizes this very clearly, in the way everything in Artemisia seamlessly work, because of this hardworking people. These people that do not hesitate to host Winter and her guard and her maid, who talk to her cousin as she tells them stories of the palace and air their minor grievances in a very polite manner.

Winter is quite the diplomat, with all the people skills that Cinder was never allowed to develop. She watches and makes mental notes, and soon people start turning towards her too. Well, towards her and Jacin, but when Jacin gives out his typical cold answers, Cinder’s subjects find it easy to ignore the grumpy guard.

Cinder sees him approaching Winter full of protectiveness, all the while keeping his eyes of steel in Cinder’s well-structured glamour. She shrugs him off, her eyes telling him she’ll be perfectly okay – no-one here knows the auburn-haired girl with grey eyes named Cinder. She’s just one of the princess’s maids, and nobody of notice. The attention Cinder gets, she knows, is out of politeness for Winter.

She’s glad for it, though, for she has the chance to observe and learn.

“Do tell me how it is to work so close to Her Highness, Cinder dear,” pleads the elder lady with kind blue eyes, handing Cinder a glass of water. She is sitting in the woman’s kitchen, hand of plastic and of bone grasping the glass perfectly through her glamour. She takes a sip so she can arrange her thoughts and get used to speak again. “I’m sure Princess Winter is as lovely in the palace as she is here.”

“Oh, of course, ma’am.” Cinder nods in agreement, opening up a very timid smile. She does not like having this charade with her own people, but this is the only way she’d be allowed to see them at all. “Princess Winter is forever kind and gentle.”

“Such a pity about her gift, though,” interrupts the woman’s daughter, sitting so close to Cinder she has to put her plastic hand away from the table. “Princess Winter is a very nice and polite young lady. I remember that not that many years ago she showed such promising talent...”

The silence extends between the three of them and Cinder makes herself busy by staring at the glass and drinking every last drop of water. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, because Winter’s gift and Winter’s sickness are a very delicate matter that they do not, in any circumstance, discuss outside of the family. If Uncle Evret proved himself disappointed with his daughter’s sudden lack of skill, he never showed. And, even if it _does_ bother Aunt Levana, neither of them knew about Winter’s newly acquired and very scary hallucinations.

Both Cinder and Jacin made sure of it.

The day Cinder first saw Squire Clay, she recognized a very guilty look in Winter’s face, while Jacin’s showed nothing at all. He learned all too well from his father, and Cinder remembers having to lend her shoulder so her cousin could cry about how she had ruined the life of the boy she loved. The very next day, however, both of them acted like absolutely nothing had happened and Cinder knew why: this is the way things were done in the Lunar Court. Everyone hid absolutely everything and anything that could be used against them.

Wasn’t Cinder herself wearing an appearance that wasn’t her own so she could have precious hours of peace away from her dreadful aunt and her dreadful advisors? Cinder could not criticize nor Winter nor Jacin, so she kept her realizations to herself.

“Have you ever seen Princess Selene?”

Cinder lifts her eyes from the way light was filtered through the glass she was holding to find two pairs of eager eyes analyzing her every move. She had enough practice to know that her glamour remained perfectly in its place, but a strange feeling still makes her stomach unsettle. Cinder smiles very discreetly, and tilts her head a little, a look of amusement in her face that she knows it will be interpreted as easygoingness.

“Yes, I have. She and Princess Winter have many classes together.”

She is not lying, mind you – she does see herself daily, even if through other’s eyes and with her glamour in place. And indeed, Cinder and Winter share the same tutors and many other scholarly activities. She’s been lying to this lovely family about a great deal of things, but not about _this_.

“And how is our future Queen like?”

“Extremely shy,” replies Jacin, instead, with his features settled in stone. He makes all women jump, including Cinder, that is scolding him with a rather harsh expression. “I’m sorry to cut the conversation short, but we really must be going.”

Cinder has to stop herself before she can roll her eyes at Jacin, and when she catches a glimpse at the clock on the wall, she stands up not very gracefully. They have been gone for almost three hours, now, which meant that the timeslot Cinder had of free time to spend in the streets of Artemisia was wearing thin. Still, she listens gladly as the family that have received them insist that the Princess and her guests stay a little longer.

“I’m afraid that just won’t be possible,” Winter replies, her apologetically tone all smooth and sweet. When the elder woman that was talking to Cinder just now curtsies and kisses Winter’s hand, the highness reply in kind, making their hostess grin brightly. “I must thank you all for your most generous hospitality. It has been a lovely afternoon.”

“Yes, it was splendid to meet you all,” Cinder says, shy as Jacin described her, blinking her fake eyes in a way she’s seen Winter do a thousand times.

The goodbyes seem to take hours, but in reality it is no more than five minutes. Cinder starts to pace nervously, her eyes going back all the time to her old-fashioned watch, eager to return to the palace and let her glamour fade. This outing has been fun and productive, and it certainly filled Cinder with the resolve of finding her own voice in the ruling of Luna, but it also has been tiring. Winter wanted to see everyone she missed the last time, and their names and faces are already evading Cinder, who is working very hard on her manipulation of bioelectricity.

Soon, though, they are back walking through stores in the crowded streets and Winter’s making notes about which places to visit the next time they leave the palace. Winter forces them to stop outside a candy shop so she can buy loads of her beloved sour apple petites and both Cinder and Jacin choose to wait outside.

“You can’t talk about yourself.” Jacin is clearly talking to Cinder, but his eyes are in the shop’s windows, forever tracking Winter’s movements. “That will raise suspicion.”

“Suspicion?” Cinder lifts her eyebrow in disbelief. “A maid talking about the family she serves would raise suspicion?”

His eyes find hers full of scepticism and she hates when he is all condescending to her. Yes, Jacin may know more about the real world than she does, but Cinder’s been raised in court and is his princess and future queen. As much as she likes to be treated as a normal girl, the way Jacin does it makes her blood boil, sometimes. It was only the knowledge that Winter likes him, and that Cinder herself was brought up playing in his parents’ living room that stops her from smacking him with her plastic hand.

“The servants are not supposed to talk about you, Selene.” He whispers her name just loud enough for her to hear, and a chill crawls down her spine. She spends so much time thinking about herself as Cinder, that when somebody from her inner circle calls her by the name her mother’s given her, she gets uneasy. “Your aunt has covered you in all sorts of mysteries.”

Cinder downright shivers, now, steadying herself against the store’s window of reflectionless glass. That explains the eagerness in that women’s voices, thirsty for some insight on their future queen. _That is the reason I’m locked away like a prisoner._

_Aunt Levana wants me to be a stranger to my own people._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys!!! sorry for the delay, but i had the busiest days in college. i hope i won't get behind anymore! enjoy :)


	4. stardust

**three - stardust.**

Being buried underneath a pile of wires and control panels leaves Cinder painfully aware of her prostheses. She huffs a lock of dishevelled hair away from her vision and adjusts her posture, making sure her glamour is in place. The comfortable humming of machinery is all around her, and she taps the portscreen to program the system diagnosis. She changed a few burned wires, but she’s still not sure that will suffice to bring the security cameras of the menagerie and rooms nearby back to life.

“Is it working?,” she demands from one of the guards that are supposed to be supervising her work. Cinder has to kick back some of the wires in order to gaze in the direction of the guard. She hears the tapping of keyboards and a sees a satisfied nod.

“They are back.”

Cinder sighs, relieved. She’s been down here for almost two hours, now, and soon her tutors will miss her. She has to get out of the security centre as soon as possible.

“Good. Can you move them around?”

The guard reaches for the touchpad in front of him and slides his index finger throughout the grey, slightly porous surface. Seeing that her companion is distracted, Cinder gets to her knees and to her feet as ungracefully she can, taking advantage of the few seconds of freedom. She gets behind the guard and sees the cameras shuffle in the direction he commands, and she can help it but to grin to another completed task.

“Yeah, they are back to normal.” The guard turns to face her, smiling a little. She uses her glamour to shade the heat in her cheeks. “Nice work, mechanic.”

Cinder dismisses the compliment with a wave of her hand. After saying their goodbyes, she leaves the security centre as quickly as she and her prosthetic leg can, being careful to hold her glamour in place and not to limp while she leaves the service areas of the palace behind. Cinder adjusts her gloves and looks at the time with frustration: she’ll have to hurry if she’s to meet Winter for their classes. It would be another dull hour of her cousin pretending to use her gifts and Cinder holding her glamour faithfully in place.

She wouldn’t like anyone to see how scarred she was. Alas, her aunt and regent wouldn’t allow it. Cinder shrugs the thought away as she enters the hallway that leads to her bedroom, changing her glamour automatically as she does so: the invisible mechanic becomes the invisible princess, and only Jacin, positioned at her door, would know the difference.

“You’re late,” he accuses her, with a mere whisper. She smiles apologetically at him.

“Sorry, it took longer than expected. Technology can be more unpredictable than royals.”

He’s been covering her incursions for more than a year, now, and Cinder is grateful for it, even though she still feels like punching him in the teeth sometimes. Her remark makes a flash of humour flicker in his cold, steel-like eyes, but it’s gone as soon as it comes, and Jacin opens the door so she can get it and get ready.

She thanks him with a nod and promises to be dressed in less than ten minutes. As she steps inside her room, Cinder takes a moment to breathe calmly and steady as she makes her way to the washroom so she can clean herself to be presentable to her classes and further appointments. Every other day she attends the state meetings her aunt hosts in her behalf, to learn better how to be a great queen of Luna, and she is glad for it: her job would not be easy, once she turned eighteen, and she should have the opportunity to know her people’s grievances and learn how to address them properly.

But Luna doesn’t seem to be in much trouble, if the meetings she attends are any indication. It was mostly about productivity on the outer sectors of Luna, of new prerogatives to be taught in their schools, of training of new guards and allocation of resources. Rarely does Earth pop up on those counsels, and Cinder wonders how is the huge planet just beneath them doing. She’s heard of her aunt’s (and, in a certain sense, of Cinder’s) army and the precautions the monarchy is taking in case of an Earthen offensive, but nobody will tell her more than that, not even her aunt.

The memory of their last fight seeps through Cinder’s spine as cold, slimy gel. She fights a shiver as she changes her clothes, choosing a pair of sensible trousers and trusting her glamour to hide her prosthetic hand. She looks at it before building her wall of bioelectricity, and the black and white plastic claw doesn’t look back almost in a defiant way. Cinder slides her real, fleshy fingers, between the fake ones and squeeze them to make sure everything is in place, after the repairs she had to make earlier. Then, as her glamour warps reality to best suit Cinder’s purposes, she faces two identical hands, pink and healthy, perfect in their own way.

Her door opens and Jacin is at the threshold, waiting, his face a perfect mask of civility and nothingness.

“Highness, it’s time.”

She nods and they leave for class. Winter soon joins them, skipping in her huge skirt, giggling and trying to make Jacin smile. He stands behind the princesses in a respectful distance, far enough so he can’t hear their conversation but still being able to lounge himself between them and a bullet, if necessary. That means, of course, that Winter keeps turning on her heels to make faces in his direction, her colourful eyes shining in the strong light of the palace.

Cinder has to smother a laugh when all of Winter’s efforts amount to a deep frustrated sigh from Jacin. She pulls her cousin closer, linking their arms, and Winter pouts for a second before opening up a warm, dazzling smile.

“Hello, cousin.”

Cinder reaches out to Winter’s hair, securing a rebel lock of ebony behind her cousin’s ear. They are walking more slowly now, Winter’s guard dictating their rhythm as he strolls in front of the girls.

“Hi. How’s your day been?”

Winter shrugs, and even in her own unpretentious manner, she does it beautifully. Even though the question might sound completely ordinary to the casual observer, both Cinder and Jacin know it’s filled with its own meaning and burden. The guard even steps a little bit closer, eager to hear whatever Winter’s response might be.

“Uneventful.”

Cinder has to stop herself before she can eye Jacin, meaningfully. Instead, she just nods and open the smallest of smiles in the corner of her lips. It was not even a week ago since Winter woke up all the royal family’s wing screaming, in another episode of Lunar sickness. It was getting more and more out of control, and Cinder knew Uncle Evret was suspecting of something. These were not mere nightmares, and all the talent Winter had displayed since they were little girls was turning into something dark and horrible, that troubled not only Cinder’s cousin and best friend, but also the rest of the royal family, even the Clays.

“Would you like to go to the menagerie after our lesson, dear cousin?”

It’s almost impossible to say no to Winter when she’s bashing her eyelashes in such a innocent manner, but Cinder has to shake her head in denial, her shoulders falling. It had been less than 24 hours since her and Aunt Levana had their fight, and the idea of sitting in a room watching her rule Cinder’s country made her sick to her stomach. Yet, she had a duty to her people and to the memory of her mother: she could not neglect her obligations simply because her aunt insisted on treating her like a worthless five-year-old.

“I have a meeting.”

“I thought you might want to skip it, after...”

Winter’s deliberate silence is filled with a serene and perverse kind of knowledge: her cousin sees and understands much more than she lets on, and if Winter believes that Cinder’s fight with Aunt Levana was so severe that Cinder would be inclined to forfeit her place as Princess of Luna just in order to muster a couple more hours away from the Queen Regent... She sighs, and the motion makes her fine, almost-black hair slide in a swift manner across her shoulders.

Cinder catches a glimpse of worry in Winter’s doe-like eyes, and she squeezes her cousin’s hand between her flesh fingers in, what she hopes, is a comforting manner. They are already at their tutor’s door, and Cinder has just enough time do whisper to Winter, “I’ll be fine,” before they have to enter and fail at their lessons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there! these first few chapters are all about the setting, so they are not full of action. i hope you guys are still with me and enjoying it. :)


	5. the good wife

**four - the good wife.**

The room extends beyond Cinder’s vision in its white, glittery form, almost too bright for her to handle. The Sun shines through biodomes and special, reflectionless glass, a little short from unrestrained. Cinder’s aunt sits in the throne that belonged to Cinder’s mother, her sheer white-and-gold gown serving as a kind of figurehead, the throne room being her vessel. Cinder doubts very much her aunt would like the comparison, so she remains silent, but it is obvious by the way Levana holds herself that this is her intention: to be the centre of attention. All eyes must be locked on her, on her slender figure and blood-red lips, on her perfect, arrow-like posture and glittering eyes.

Cinder adjusts herself on the dais, in a chair made of golden wood and crimson velvet, the circlet of platinum and onyx tangling in all of her too-fine hair. Her flesh fingers try to stead the crown on her head, and Winter is looking at her with a dangerous amusement in her eyes, so Cinder just stops, her attention drifting back to boring issues of productivity. She has to smother a sigh when a holograph of charts pops with the waving of the councilwoman responsible to measure the performance of the outer sectors in the last five months.

Even through her aunt’s glamour, Cinder can tell she’s still livid by Cinder’s last interruption, in the last reunion she was allowed to attend. Because of that, Cinder stays in her place as still as a marble statue, holding her appearance crafted in bioelectricity as one of an interested girl who’s paying very much attention to whatever is being presented to her, now.

The thing is, of course, that Cinder pretty much knows by heart all the statistics that the councilwoman is introducing for the court. For the last three months, maybe a little bit more, Cinder has been studying the outer sectors, to learn more about their production and industry, and she even reads the reports on advance so she can make the right questions and learn what precisely is troubling her. As a way to punish Cinder, it seems, her aunt is making her bear witness to another report much like the one from the last reunion.

The meeting in which Cinder had too many unanswered questions. The one in which her disquiet won her internal battle and she finally pressed her aunt for the information she wanted. The very same meeting that made fire climb its ways to Levana’s eyes, and that made Cinder lose control of her own body and abilities for a couple of seconds.

Cinder clings to her chair in a manner that makes her joints – made of flesh and plastic alike – snap. She licks her lips but maintain her mask of politeness and interest, and when the councilwoman finishes her speech and her aunt makes her remarks, they drift toward the next subject. Punishment for the citizens who have failed to comply to the crown-enforced curfew. Cinder’s eyes roll in their orbits, and she’s about to ask her aunt why people just can’t be left to do as they please with their free time when the doors open with a blast.

Head Thaumaturge Sybil Mira looks like she’s just seen a ghost.

Cinder shifts in her seat, and eyes Winter. Winter blinks her impossibly long lashes and stands a little bit taller, trying to see the commotion that the thaumaturge draws to herself. Cinder’s aunt seems to freeze in place, but her glamour is set in stone, as regal and as unreadable as ever. Not even rising an eyebrow in suspicion of the drastic interruption, Levana gestures for Thaumaturge Mira to approach.

“What is it, Sybil?” Her aunt’s voice is as sweet as it is dangerous, and it brings a shiver down Cinder’s spine that she just barely controls.

Bowing low, the thaumaturge has her eyes locked on Cinder, measuring her every move. Cinder glares back at the older woman, chin up, defiance sparkling in her dark eyes. She even makes her glamour a bit more severe, so as to match Mira’s penetrating stare.

“I have news, my Queen,” she begins, very solemnly. Cinder’s eyebrow rises in response to the thaumaturge’s stone-like tone. “But perhaps this is not the kind of news to be discussed in front of the young princess.”

The court catches its breath and Cinder’s glamour masks her ugly blush. _How dare she?_ Cinder is going to be the Lunar Queen sooner than later, and if Thaumaturge Mira intends to keep her post, she should try better to win Cinder’s sympathy.

“I am old enough to hear the grievances of my people, Thaumaturge Mira,” she replies, coldly, but with a bright smile. “Therefore, I am old enough to hear your reports, no matter how... _troubling_ they may be.”

Levana huffs, the sound surprisingly unqueenlike, and Cinder knows she must have annoyed her aunt. Alas, that is all that Cinder has been managing to do when in her aunt’s presence, for the last couple years, so she ignores the disapproving gesture and maintains her defensive pose, defying her aunt to contradict her.

“If Selene thinks she can hear this, and dismiss my obvious concern towards her judgment...” Queen Levana looks at her courtesans, with a knowing and motherly smile that makes Cinder sick to her stomach. “I am not the one to be in our princess’s way.”

Cinder’s blush strengthens and she keeps iron fists in her glamour. She hates when her aunt makes her feel small and child-like, which has proven to be one of the queen’s preferred hobbies. For once, she’s glad she’s had all those years of practising the shape of her fake appearance. Not even her aunt can know how upset her features are, because the Blackburn glamour is strong, and her own aunt is definite proof of that. Cinder cannot recall ever seeing her aunt’s true form, only the round, olive face with huge sparkling and impossibly colourful eyes.

From where Cinder is standing, when the light shines just right in her aunt’s face, she looks a little like Winter. The realisation sends a shiver down Cinder’s spine, carefully hidden behind the marble wall of her glamour.

“My Queen...” The Head Thaumaturge’s voice is unsteady, but only for half a moment, and Cinder thinks she recognizes the shadow of a plea in the simple syllables. She arches an eyebrow at the same time her aunt does, and Cinder automatically schools herself to be more neutral, less eager. She has to act like she is up to speed with every bit of information her aunt has. No one can know how ardently Cinder wishes she was included in all of the council meetings the queen hosts.

The looks Queen Regent Levana and her thaumaturge exchange are full of a hidden meaning that Cinder can’t quite grasp or understand. The thought is very unsettling, to know that are huge things about Luna and its management that Cinder has no access to; however bitter the taste in her tongue is, she swallows it and waits. Cinder scans Mira’s frame looking for something incriminating, and all she can see is discomfort. Maybe she did not like the way her aunt treat Cinder? No, that wouldn’t be it: Cinder always had the distinct impression that Sybil Mira secretly revels on the harsh way Cinder is treated by her aunt.

When Levana keeps her expression as impenetrable as diamond, her thaumaturge lets go the smallest of sighs.

“We’ve come across evidence of a special kind of Earthen artefact that can tip the scales of the upcoming war.”

The cold declaration drains all the blood from Cinder’s face, and she feels much like in one of Winter’s hallucinations. Her breaths are shallow, but measured, and she urges Mira’s report to continue with a simple and regal nod. Eyeing her aunt, Cinder realizes that she has too become a marble statue, glamour-coloured irises trained on the Head Thaumaturge.

“It’s said that it makes Earthens immune to bioelectricity manipulation, if installed correctly in the base of one’s nervous system.”

The uproar comes in a wave filled with shock, and the courtesans and councilpeople are too busy speculating with one another and trying to find out amongst each other if Sybil’s words care meaning to be paying attention to their Queen Regent. Cinder, on the other hand, watched the news being delivered at the same time she studied her aunt’s face to see her reaction. She saw the fury and disgust in her gorgeous, statuesque features, and saw just how difficult it was for her to pull herself back to normal.

“And?”

Cinder did not realize the thaumaturge’s report was incomplete, but one quick look at Sybil Mira made her certain that her aunt was right in push the matters further. The Head Thaumaturge steadies herself, and all the restless voices in the throne room start to die out. Everyone has their eyes locked on Sybil, remarkably interested in what she has to say. Cinder can only imagine how far these news will spread throughout Artemisia, burning in the tongues of every single Lunar who has been present in this occasion. The gossip will be unbearable.

Her aunt should have taken Mira’s advice to talk in private, because this is a matter of national security. But, for one, Cinder is very much glad her aunt did not – she was tired of being ignored and moved to the sidelines in the government of her own country. She _will_ know of all things that happen on Luna, that will be her responsibility once she turns eighteen. Her aunt will no longer keep her in the dark.

“Not only does this device has effects in Earthens, but also, it is speculated, if installed in Lunars, it can keep us from using our gifts.”

The room falls so silent that Cinder is almost sure everyone can hear her heartbeat racing across the walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you guys are still interested and would love to hear from you! :D i really liked writing cinder's relationship with levana in this one: our girl is quite the fighter! also, things are starting to get interesting!!!


	6. grey's anatomy

**five - grey's anatomy.**

“And how are we feeling today, Your Highness?”

Dr. Tanner’s voice is usually smooth, but Cinder’s headache makes her feel like he’s chewing through glass, the sound loud and obnoxious. She tries to hide her cringe with an encouraging smile, as she slides to the chair in front of the doctor’s table, and place both her hands on her lap.

“Fine, doctor, just a hellish headache.”

He nods, understanding.

“It’s been a rough couple of weeks, I’ve heard. Well, you _did_ miss your last appointment, so...”

“I’m sorry about it, doctor.” Cinder shifts uncomfortably on the chair that has harboured her so much it almost has her frame imprinted on it. “My aunt and I have to deal with some very serious issues, of late.” She sighs, looking at the man who has cared for her health for the last ten years and recognizing the everlasting gentleness and wisdom in the wrinkles around his eyes. “I am sure you’ve heard.”

Cinder has heard more than she thinks she can bear. She had to resort to eavesdropping her aunt’s secret council meetings, in addition of demanding to be an active voice more frequently. She’s barely had any time to sleep – and when she eventually found some, she would find herself in her bed, too tired even to doze off, her mind racing in twenty different scenarios.

She had just learned something that could change everything, and she could not wait to tell Winter. But before she can do that, she has to sit with Dr. Tanner to do her monthly check-up, and see if her prosthesis are in good condition or must be changed.

“We hear all sorts of things, working in the palace, Princess.” He looks up just for a second and Cinder knows they are being recorded. She knows that they are not safe from her aunt’s watchful and paranoid eyes and ears: not even here, in this place where so much sensitive things are said. Queen Levana would like very much to be aware of her niece’s every step.

As if she needed any reminder. She knows she is being watched more closely these days, and Jacin has not been scaled to her personal entourage since the day of the disastrous council meeting. Apparently, his superiors did not trust Sir Clay to put his duty above his friendship with the princess, and that hurt Cinder.

She knows Jacin is one of the most loyal guards to ever work to the Blackburn dynasty. He’s been utterly devoted to her family since he played Princess and the Guard with Cinder and Winter. If there’s anyone in this palace she would trust her life with, besides Uncle Evret, it was Jacin, and Dr. Tanner.

Cinder taps her real nails in the glossy glass of the doctor’s table once. Twice. Thrice. He blinks. She nods.

“Well, I am glad you could come today, Princess Selene.” He lights up a holograph node that glimmers with a picture of Cinder’s spine, her least famous prostheses. The fire, when she was just three, damaged the left side of her body pretty severely, eating away flesh and bone, demanding immediate attention and a number of surgeries Cinder does not recall. One of the most invasive of the procedures was the one that replaced her ruined vertebrae for a 3D printed match.

Thinking about it makes Cinder cringe. She shrinks herself for a moment, while Dr. Tanner searches for her digital file, pulling different x-rays from throughout the years. Cinder had to have the bone prostheses replaced twice, when she was eleven and fifteen and had outgrew them; according to Dr. Tanner’s estimative, she would still have a couple of surgeries when she was older, when she finally entered adulthood and stopped growing.

Dr. Tanner also always talked about Earthen methods of bodily reconstruction: that was the main reason he was recruited to the palace. He is the only specialist in all of Luna to understand the little details and engineering that are involved in the delicate art of reconstructive surgery. Even though Lunars had very little (if any) contact with Earth, Cinder knows that everything that’s been done to her body was, in a manner, adapted from Earthen medicinal advances. She knows that down in the Blue Planet, there are people with intelligent limbs, connected via sophisticated wiring to their nervous system, that respond to neural discharges and not only by brute force. Cinder has frequently wondered how it would be like to have her left hand and leg answering to her brain, just like her right leg and hand do.

She thinks she would like the feeling of not having to drag part of her body around, but rather having it move with her in a graceful manner, just like Winter’s movements on the dance floor. Cinder is a clumsy disaster in comparison, despite being used to the plastic she takes off before bed every night. To be at peace with her own body... That would make her very happy. Secure. Herself.

Dr. Tanner dismisses her with the date of her next appointment and a glint in his eyes. She goes back to her room in a hurry, eyes trained on the numerous clocks distributed along the palace’s walls, making calculations as she goes.

There is an extra guard outside her door and she opens it to find Winter seated on her carpeted floor, a world of needles and threads and pillowcases at her feet. Her cousin doesn’t even look up at Cinder, but rather opens a space in the middle of her seamstress mess so she can keep her company. Cinder sighs, dropping herself to the floor with a loud _thud_ , her right leg folded against her thigh and her left leg hanging useless to her front, a pillar of plastic.

“What are you doing?”

“The birds are very loud outside my chambers, and I need to concentrate,” Winter explains, digging her needle in the soft white fabric of the pillowcase. The path she is making with her coloured threads are intertwining itself in a beautiful, yet chaotic design. Cinder thinks she sees a little bit of gold, here and there, and anchors herself closer, to investigate.

“It’s beautiful, even if a bit confusing.”

“It’s the inside of my head.”

Winter says it nonchalantly, like she has just complimented Cinder’s clothes, and Cinder lets out a sigh that makes Winter’s curly hair waver a little. When her cousin starts to speak in riddles, Cinder knows she has just hallucinated. The stubbornness in Winter’s shoulders and the way her eyes keep darting in the pillowcase, almost in an automatic manner are all the signs Cinder needs to recognize to know that she is right.

Cinder covers Winter’s hands with her own, stopping her cousin’s work all at once. Winter’s huge eyes lock on Cinder’s worried face, and she thinks she sees a little bit of rebelliousness before they soften to the distant gaze her cousin often shows. Lunar sickness takes its toll on Winter a little bit at a time, but it does all the same: Cinder has seen the progression of the madness, and despite the fact that there is still plenty of Winter in the eyes of the girl before her, there is also something else: something deep and dark and dangerous and utterly lost.

Winter should use her gift often, even if she doesn’t want to. She has to get better, to take care of herself in such a hostile environment as the Lunar court. There would be a time and a place where neither Cinder nor Jacin nor Uncle Evret would be at her side to defend her, and the thought terrorizes Cinder.

“We need to talk, Winnie.”

The pet name seems silly when Cinder says it, but it lights something behind Winter’s eyes and smile. She steps closer to Cinder, letting her head rest on Cinder’s shoulder, the sides of their bodies touching from arms to feet. Cinder chuckles when Winter’s hair gets all tangled up with her own and with her fingers, and the start of a song starts to grow in her cousin’s throat.

“You remember Thaumaturge Mira’s report, don’t you?,” Cinder whispers, behind her breath, so low that only Winter would listen, not the spying hardware her aunt had installed in her bedroom. Winter nods, only slightly, and it would seem to anyone watching that she was only adjusting her head to sit more comfortably on Cinder’s shoulder. “I have found out that, when installed in Lunars, it can keep Lunar sickness from manifesting,” she continues, even lower, the weight of her words making the air between the two girls seem heavy with knowledge and tension.

Winter keeps humming, but Cinder can feel her heartbeat racing through her fingertips.

“Then we must get to Earth, dear cousin.”

Yes, they must. The question is, of course, how? Would Aunt Levana be up to the task of getting Winter the help she needs? Cinder doubts it – Aunt Levana loves Uncle Evret, not anyone else, not Cinder and certainly not Winter, the constant reminder of Uncle Evret’s first wife. It didn’t take Cinder long to realize that her mother’s sister did not have it in her to love Cinder, her successor and Luna’s rightful ruler. Aunt Levana loved Luna above all else: and this made Cinder herself only a pawn in her aunt’s game. She does not doubt the ability of the Queen Regent to sell each and every last one of the royal family to whatever destiny, just to fulfil her wishes.

Since she’s took up on spying and eavesdropping her aunts secret meetings, Cinder has grown more confident in this realization. She never thought she was in danger in Artemisia: after all, she would soon be eighteen and allowed to rule her own people, but it was only when she found out that she should have ascended to the throne when she was thirteen, if it wasn’t for the modification of the succession law sponsored by her aunt, that it finally occurred to Cinder that her aunt’s alienation wasn’t accidental.

“But to get to Earth, we need a bargaining chip,” Cinder evaluates to Winter’s hair. “They would not give us what we want if we have nothing to offer in return.”

Winter’s song strengthens, and she adds melodic words to her rhythm. Cinder recognizes one of the many lullabies her nannies used to sing to them as little girls, and even join in on the first opportunity she can, leaving Winter free to speak.

“You must let me help you in your investigations, Cinder.”

Cinder shakes her head. It is too dangerous: Winter is too fragile. Cinder would not like to watch her cousin and best friend break because of Cinder’s nosiness.

“Then Jacin, or Kinney.”

“No, I must do this alone.” _It is for myself and for my people, and I will not allow anyone else to take this responsibility away from me._

Cinder’s curiosity regarding Earth and is inhabitants was something that motivated her ever since she was a little girl that had access to all the reading material of Luna, but not to its gardens. Her appointments with Dr. Tanner, one of the few that still remembered the diplomatic Earthen envoy of so many years before, helped satisfy little Cinder’s need to know everything about Luna’s neighbour.

Now, that the key to Winter live a happy and full life lies in the hands of an Earthen, Cinder knows she must turn to her most reliable and inconspicuous source of Earthen knowledge. She needs to understand their mannerisms and diplomacy, if she’s to negotiate with them. Cinder also realizes she has to gather much more information from her aunt and her spies, and the thought of having to sneak around the palace again, making herself invisible, already makes her tired.

Queen Levana makes sure her reunions filled with secrecy take place during the dead of the night, when even the servants are sleeping. Cinder has not slept restfully for more than a week now, and she is not likely to get any real sleep any time soon – she knows this is more important, she is up to the task and she will not be discouraged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys!! i'm getting pretty busy with college, so i may not be able to update next week. sorry about that, but if everything works out, we may still get a chapter by saturday! :)  
> also, dr. tanner is here. he is going to be a Big Deal. and cinder has Big Plans that will reveal themselves soon. hope you guys liked it! :D


	7. sleepy hollow

**six - sleepy hollow.**

The invisible servant girl is back.

She roams the servants’ halls in Artemisia Palace with the ease of someone who’s done it plenty of times before. She is agile and quick to smile and wave, but not many of the other who serve Queen Levana and her niece would recognize her. She is invisible by hiding in plain sight, and not long before she vanishes between rooms and piles of laundry, she is already forgotten. Look at the size of the Blackburn palace, and ask yourself: is it really possible to someone know absolutely every single soul who works there?

The invisible servant girl knows for a fact that they can’t. She knows this because her glamour has been hiding her for months, even years, now. She is truly Cinder, while she walks anonymously, fixing broken surveillance cameras, fetching notes and helping with the holo nodes or anything more high maintenance. She does not do heavy lifting, though, and stays as clear as Queen Levana’s view as possible. Her goal is to observe and learn, and she realized, after years living in this toxic court, that there are no people more invisible than faithful servants.

This is rather sad, Cinder thinks, and makes a mental note about things she would like very much to change once _she_ is queen, not her aunt. For better or worse, the Royal Family trusted these people with their lives; they should be more appreciated. This is something she learned at a very early age with her Uncle Evret, and she tries to make him proud. Servants are people too, and they listen and see as much as the Lunar Princess.

Sometimes, they see and listen even more than Princess Selene can.

Luna’s best kept secret is the level of involvement of Cinder on the government. She knows everyone expects her to be up to speed in every single one of the urgent matters that keep pressing Luna’s development. She must be as brilliant and cunning as her Aunt Levana, full of quick wit and resourceful solutions, but she never had a real chance to develop such abilities locked away at her chambers, prohibited to leave by her aunt, who always deemed her too fragile to do anything other than sit around quietly.

_Not even that, sometimes,_ Cinder thinks, a bitter taste flooding her tongue. She doesn’t look at her plastic leg, but she has the feeling the dead thing feels she’s cross with it. Cinder never liked having her movements limited to the prostheses’ capacity. More than once, when adjusting herself in her seat, her plastic joints made loud, creaking sounds, that surpassed her glamour and caught everyone’s attention to the maimed princess. She is lucky she doesn’t gait much, now, and that she can hide it under almost any circumstance.

But it took a long time to get used to the careful looks. Cinder knows that every single person she meets as Selene is looking for the flaws in her glamour, trying to sneak a peek of the princess’s man-made limbs. She’s never given any of them the satisfaction, but knowing this makes her cringe nonetheless. Sometimes, Cinder can’t wait to be queen and be free of Levana’s influence, so she can finally stop wearing her glamour like an armour. When she’s crowned, she will no longer have to hide.

That is, if she’s crowned at all.

All the intel she gathered at her meeting with Dr. Tanner is still spinning wildly in Cinder’s brain. She had no idea the shells were still kept alive – she had no idea they were being used as lab rats. The mere thought makes her sick. All those poor kids, believing they were unwanted and worthless, kept captive somewhere underground, not having the opportunity to play and have fun, even to be educated. Cinder felt deeply for them, sitting in Dr. Tanner’s austere living room, holding to a glass of water like it was a rescue shuttle and she was drowning in the emptiness of space.

“There is more,” Dr. Tanner had said, in a grim voice. The revelation made her heart stop and since then she hasn’t been able to stand still. She had to do something about all this cruelty her aunt was havocking down on Earth. This could no longer be.

Cinder coerced Winter into a sleepover. Her cousin didn’t take much effort on being convinced, though, always eager for some girls’ quality time. Even when she found out Cinder was planning on using this as an excuse to wander around the castle without an armed escort, Winter had gracefully agreed. They waited for the change of shifts and Cinder dressed herself in her servant’s glamour to spy her aunt. She is trembling as she walks as fearlessly through her illusion as she can, but she knows her heart is racing.

This has always been the hardest part: tricking the others is easy. Cinder is talented, even though her aunt has no idea. The toughest part, really, is convincing herself that she can do what she intends. _This is madness_ , she thinks more than once, clenching to her servant’s-beige skirt. _I cannot do this and not be caught_. But she must. The things she heard at Dr. Tanner’s apartment, when she showed up for their secretly set up appointment, are still haunting Cinder.

_A plague._ That is outstandingly brilliant, but also the truest form of evil Cinder’s had the displeasure of meeting in Court. To give Earthens something to fear and worry, and at the same time be the only people in the galaxy in possession of its antidote is to give Earth no way out but to ally itself to Luna. It was by no means legally bounding, but Cinder knows it will work. Even with her limited resources and knowledge of life down on the Blue Planet, she knows how letumosis has cost a steep price on all of mankind.

This is terribly messy and she is ashamed to be related to the woman who concocted this hellish plan, but alas: Queen Levana always gets what she wants, and this is just more proof of that. Cinder finds herself in need to concentrate now, eyes darting throughout the corridors, mind expanding as she looks for bioelectricity readings beyond this point. Not many servants are awaken at this godforsaken hour, so Cinder should have this part of the castle all for herself.

She finds the hidden door and slips through it. Those secret passages are scattered all around Artemisia Palace, to a meaning Cinder can only imagine. Even if the royal family suffered an attempt on their lives, there weren’t many places where they could hide in Luna. She believes they were built as some kind of precaution or to the purposes she uses them now: to spy on others.

The trellis is not made for plants, but for secrets, and it spreads against the southernmost wall of the room her aunt keeps choosing to host these meetings away from Cinder’s eyes, far away from Levana’s seat. Cinder’s glamour dissolves as she uses all of her mind to concentrate in the muffled words, closing her eyes in a semiautomatic manner. She imagines she is the room with them: with her aunt and Thaumaturge Mira, with councilpeople and someone she knows is named General Boyle, even though she has never been introduced to him. He is the head of the Queen’s new wolf soldiers, the modified Lunars that are part animal.

She hears the words “Earthen packs” and her eyes dart open in the darkness. Cinder takes in a shallow breath, not believing her aunt is actually planning a military incursion behind her back. Her flesh hand is curled into a fist and Cinder presses herself more closely to the trellis, the wood cold against her skin.

“We have a couple hundred of our finest soldiers already stationed in core points of each and every single one of Earth’s countries, Your Majesty,” the man continues, consulting a portscreen that shines a blue light against his sharp features. She finds it amusing that this man, responsible for breeding wolfpeople, looks so much like a cat. “The thaumaturges are making excellent progress in controlling them. The packs are obedient and extremely efficient. Your Majesty will not be disappointed with their performance.”

“Yes, I should hope so,” Levana says, in a voice as sweet as it is full of intimidation. “Or, should I say, _you_ should hope I am not disappointed, General Boyle?” Even from where Cinder is hiding, she can hear the man swallow. He bows deeply, and her aunt shoos him away with a graceful gesture. “Next order of business, Sybil?”

The thaumaturge readily prompts herself beside her queen, and from her point of view, Cinder can see only their backs.

“The succession law, Your Majesty.”

Cinder sees councilpeople exchange looks, and she lets go of the cold trellis like it was suddenly on fire. She takes a step back as her aunt takes Sybil’s portscreen in her hands, and Cinder can only see the light against Levana’s back.

“Do we have all the votes we need?”

“Almost, Your Grace,” replies Councilman Oliver, after a curtsy. “We are hitting some difficulties about the proposed age.”

“Twenty-two isn’t very much,” points out Queen Levana, very smoothly, in her tone that says that she will not be denied. “After all, you all met Selene. You know she is unfit to rule.”

“We know that, Majesty. The princess’s accident when she was little certainly took its toll on her upbringing.” Councilwoman Taylor’s voice is full of concern, which sends a wave of nausea through Cinder. _They are talking about me._

_They are talking about a coup._

“But I am afraid not all members of the council agree in postponing Princess Selene’s enthronement.” Taylor keeps talking, somewhat disappointed. “Maybe if Your Majesty would include Her Highness in more meetings and state matters, and she proved _then_ her inability, the others would be more inclined to accept.”

Cinder cannot see her aunt’s face, but she knows it must scream murder, if you know how to read it. In fact, she can almost imagine it, against her closed eyelids, filled with hateful tears: the horrifying look in her gem-like eyes, the discreet down-turn of the corner of her blood-red lips, her flawless posture just a tiny bit more queenly. When Levana is dissatisfied, she gets bigger, more regal, definitely more serene. There is where the danger lies: in her aunts calm expression, hiding a wall of hatred.

“I suppose so,” Levana agrees in a most diplomatic tune. By the shape of her syllables, Cinder knows she is livid by the suggestion. “I just worry, you know. Selene will be eighteen soon, and we are at risk of losing everything we have worked so hard for because she is not ready, and, I believe, will never be.” She sighs most dramatically. “It is not easy ruling Luna. We should not deliver the future of our home in hands that have proven themselves unable.”

If Cinder could, she would jump at her aunt’s throat right this second. _I am unable because you made me so!,_ she wants to yell. Now she has all the confirmation she needs that her aunt never planned on crowning her on the first place: she has been regent for more than sixteen years, and that has not been enough – would never been enough. The ruling of Luna must be Levana’s for all her life, or it simply would not do.

“We hear the princesses are failing their lessons, Your Majesty,” Councilman Hoede says, in a sort of inquiry.

“Yes, that is most unfortunate. Winter showed such promise!,” Levana’s voice is full of rehearsed sorrow. “Selene, though, was never much talented herself.”

Cinder has to smother a bitter laugh with her own fist. _You have no idea, dear auntie._ She would show the untalented, broken and useless princess she could be. And it is going to start by dismantling her aunt’s wolf army pack by pack.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for the tardiness!!! but here it is!!! i guess you guys will be happy to know that i finally sat down and planned this thing up until chapter 24, and even so it's not finished. so yeah, there is that, and i hope y'all will bear with me! :)


	8. the phantom menace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys!!! just a heads up: this chapter comes in earlier in the week, but it is because i'm going on a month-long hiatus due to NaNoWriMo!!! more details at the end notes. :)

**seven - the phantom menace.**

Cinder rushes back to her room a ghost of a girl, picking the pieces of her shattered glamour slowly and in a very deliberate manner. She does it so she can calm herself, put her heart back where it belongs, and she almost forgets she had tweaked with the guard’s schedule so Jacin and Uncle Evret are the ones posted to her door, eyes trained on the wall in front of them.

“Stop there,” her uncle says, voice full of authority. Cinder realizes her servant’s glamour still clouds her real self and she slips away the bioelectricity all at once, making Uncle Evret abandon his flawlessly stern guard look. “Cinder?”

“Inside,” she commands, and opens her doors all at once. Usually they wouldn’t follow her, but she knows they are perceptive: they probably noticed the way she squares her shoulders or the trail of dry tears on her cheekbones. Before Uncle Evret can flood the room with questions, she puts her index finger across her lips and pulls a wire from beneath her bed, a miniscule recording device on its tip. “Boost me,” she whispers to Jacin, pointing towards the chandelier in her roof, and he does so without questioning. She finds the other recorder easily enough, and is soon back on the floor.

Cinder locks both spying devices on one of her bathroom drawers and has to stop for a few seconds, to catch her breath. She looks at the wall, where a mirror should be, and breathes in and out slowly, carefully not to hyperventilate, the shapes of a plan already taking its place on her scheming mind.

If she had to find a way to go to Earth before, in name of Winter, now she has to do it also for herself.

The metal of the faucet is cold against her flesh fingers, and she opens it until the water is so noisy, it shadows her heartbeat. Then, she jerks her head below the water flow, feeling the water against her skin in a kind of refreshingly cold clarity. She washes her face and grabs the closest towel, burying her whole head on the fluffy fabric.

“Cinder?,” Winter calls, entering the bathroom, rubbing the sleep off her eyes. “Is everything fine?” She takes one look at Cinder and tilts her head, sparkly eyes shining with worry and curiosity. “What is wrong?”

Cinder takes Winter’s hand on her own and they make their way back to the sleeproom together.

“Levana is planning a coup,” she says, in the barest of whispers. She knows her aunt’s had placed only two listening devices to her room – she found them very early and kept them in their place so she wouldn’t award herself unwanted attention – but she still feels she is being spied on. “I just came from one of her secret meetings. She wants the Council to postpone my coronation until I am twenty-two.”

“That would give Her Majesty plenty of time to get rid of you,” Jacin states, flatly. Cinder just nods, but Uncle Evret shifts in his place, uncomfortably eyeing Cinder.

“I need to leave Luna. Now.”

“No.”

“Uncle Evret...”

“Absolutely not, Selene. You are our rightful ruler. And more, you are deserving of this. All of us know how much time you spend in learning your job.”

Cinder shakes her head, trying to hug herself as her plastic hand falls helplessly against her body. She’s always wished for what Uncle Evret says to be true... She wishes she would be a great ruler, a Lunar Queen to enter valiantly onto the history books, but deep within her she knows this isn’t true. She has lived her sheltered, ignorant life for far too long. She was slow in realizing that her aunt was not protecting her fragile health, but rather keeping her away from the government. In the dark, like a child, giving her the toys to play with but not a single thing that would help her learn how to lead a country.

Cinder had to figure out on her own, and she made painfully slow progress. She was thirteen when she finally understood all of the Council’s prerogatives, and only then she realized she should take part on it. At age fourteen, she learned about Luna’s astounding growth and the implications it had on the sustainability of her home. It was then, also, that she started sneaking questions about Earth to Dr. Tanner – how are Earthens like, culture-wise?, do they look any different?, why do they place such importance on _marriages_? She was fifteen, and recovering from her surgeries, when she slowly pieced together the duties of all the committees beneath Council authority. It was then that she took a knack for asking questions and reading boring, long reports, full of numbers and statistics she did not quite understood.

She had to know politics, in a place nobody was interested in teaching her some.

Now, she is sixteen, as close as she’s ever been to being crowned Queen of Luna, and she knows little more than she did as a child. She knows much, when compared to the commoners of Artemisia, because she knows how her government works, how can one law be built and approved, how the districts are organized and the best ways to mass produce whatever it is they may need. But that is still nothing, compared to what her aunt must know, compared to what she must have learned in her years as Queen Regent.

Cinder sees herself, in the ominous darkness of her chambers, as Levana and the councilpeople do: as a broken princess, uneducated and untalented, uncharismatic and unknown to her people. What political support does she have, in this Court where everyone is a pawn to Queen Levana’s unrelenting game? _None._ They all see her as fragile, a girl who survived a fire but could never be whole, that is failing in her lessons and that seldom is seen by her peers.

Cinder wants to scream at the evil brilliance of Levana’s plan. All was so very neatly architected in the years following Cinder’s accident: the constant appointments to ensure Cinder was healthy, but in reality only showed the everlasting medical attention she needed; the way she was always advised to stay in her room, so that she could not threaten herself, or, when she got older and stronger, so that she could not offend courtesans with her fake limbs, keeping her away from making connections to the people that sought the favour of the royal family; the way she was deliberately performing under the expected, so she could invisibly walk through Artemisia Palace and Artemisia City, that only demonstrated that she is an utter failure in using her gift.

She has been dancing to Levana’s song for years, and only realizing this now.

“Uncle, I _have_ to,” she pleads, looking him straight in the eye. “I am _afraid_ of what she might do to me.”

“She won’t do anything to you, Cinder,” he promises, in that deep voice of his, full of confidence and support. For a fleeting moment, Cinder almost believes in him – if there is anyone on this universe that can sway her aunt to do anything, that person in her beloved husband. Cinder has, after all, _some_ political ground when it comes to influencing her aunt, it seems.

“Well, not for _now_ ,” Cinder indulges, pacing fast around the room, her plastic leg making that irritating noise that says it needs greasing. “She hasn’t gathered all the votes she needs to pass a new law with the Council.”

“There you go.”

“But I must leave _eventually_. She will not give me any opportunity to prove myself here, under her eyes. She never has.”

“Besides, I need to leave too.” Winter’s voice is clear as sunlight, light as a feather, her huge eyes centred on Cinder’s pained expression. Jacin’s head turns suddenly to her direction, his face a rigid mask of nothingness, but his knuckles white as he transforms his hands into fists.

Uncle Evret blinks, not understanding. Winter jumps from Cinder’s bed, where she had sat prettily as the perfect princess she is, hands in her lap, and strides towards her father very calmly and full of purpose, like a ballerina.

“Princess...” Jacin’s voice is full of warning. Winter pays him a meaningful look but takes her father’s hands on her own all the same. He simply nods, but Cinder knows him too well to see besides his trained expression. He worries about Winter’s secret getting out and making her life at Artemisia Palace even more unbearable.

“Daddy, I must tell you something.”

The sigh full of relief that escapes Cinder’s lips stays still in the heavy mood of the room. She looks at Jacin, always the perfect guard, and wonders if he ever imagined being present the moment Winter tells of her sickness to her dad. Cinder always assumed she would be there to hold Winter’s hand – her cousin made her promise – but Jacin is... a different matter. His devotion to Winter can be seen as romantic or as blinding, and Cinder knows this is a dangerous path they both trail.

“I have been failing my lessons on purpose,” Winter whispers, in a sing-song voice, blinking one eye to her father. “I am not going to be responsible for anymore manipulation. I refuse it.” She sounds so certain, her dear cousin, so brave and righteous. But Cinder hears the fear in her voice, no matter how bad Winter tries to shake it.

“You... are failing your lessons on purpose,” Evret echoes, with uncertainty. His gaze drifts towards Cinder. “And you are, too, if that glamour you shed like a nightgown just now is any indication.”

Cinder just shrugs.

“She is probably better than most second-class thaumaturges,” Jacin replies in her stead, nonchalantly. Cinder rolls her eyes and Winter catches her father’s attention once more.

“Daddy. My nightmares.”

“You are not using your gifts.”

Winter is shaking her head, biting her lower lip.

“No, I am not.”

“For how long?”

“Almost a year? Or a little more, I can’t really recall.”

Uncle Evret takes a deep breath, taking Winter is his arms in a tight hug. Cinder watches as her cousin slides her seamstress’s arms around her father’s uniform and lingers closer to him, the suggestion of tears in her long lashes.

“You are sick, aren’t you?”

“Just a little.”

“It could be worse,” Cinder intervenes. “Winter has always been extremely talented, and we have managed to treat her nightmares and hallucinations so far.” She stops for a while, considering her next words, feeling Jacin’s gaze burning a hole in her skin. “But the opportunity for Winter to live a happy, normal life, is down on Earth.” She quickly retells all she knows about the device that not only can be used to make Earthens immune to the Lunar gift, but also help people like Winter.

“Cinder leaving is as much for me as for her, Daddy.”

The silence is heavy in Cinder’s chambers. She recalls she has been standing up for hours, and suddenly her legs feel like huge pieces of lead, as she drags herself to her bed. The smoothness of the mattress beneath her thighs is comforting, just like is the possibility of propping her foot up, so it can stop hurting. She sits and lets out a sigh of relief, catching in the corner of her eye Winter separating herself from Evret’s hug.

“It looks like I _must_ leave, at least.” A shiver takes control of Cinder for a couple seconds, feeling cold and slick against her spine. “At first, I would just help Winnie and try to build better relations with Earth.” Cinder sighs heavily, the motion shaking her body as she tries to smother a yawn. Oh, how she’s been naïve... She has been nothing but a bright-eyed, idealistic girl with too little practice in the ways of the real world.

But she will learn from her mistakes, and she will start this very second.

“There has been a change of plans, cousin, that is all.” Winter’s voice is full of surety, filled with such confidence in Cinder... She is not entirely sure she is worthy of such privilege. “What is certain is that, if you insist in leaving, you must not do it _now_.”

Cinder nods and adjusts herself, her head using Winter’s lap as a pillow at the very same second as her cousin climbs to her bed. She has realized this as soon as the fog of panic dissolved in front of her eyes: the adrenaline that rushed through her veins as she left her hiding place kicked in her flight response, but that simply is not feasible. In leaving now, without warning, Cinder would just place Luna on her aunt’s hands.

She has to develop a plan that involves staying in Luna, and quickly.

“You must be missed.” Winter hums, as she takes Cinder’s hair between her fingers. Cinder closes her eyes, completely exhausted, letting the sound of her cousin’s voice calm her rushing mind.

“Yes. Tomorrow morning, I will speak with Councilpeople Duncan and Randall, to ask for their guidance.” Cinder takes a deep breath and covers her eyes with her flesh hands. “I will be damned if Levana thinks she can rob me of my birthright without a fight.”

Winter giggles and places a feather-light kiss on Cinder’s forehead. Gathering all her courage, Cinder sits up, eyeing each and every one of her co-conspirators, the people she trusts the most in this entire moon.

“We must keep secrecy. And we will need help, with the spyware and possibly with access to more intelligence.” She rubs her eyes and tries to list all her practiced glamours, trying to be certain that her aunt has never seen any of them, and trying to pick the most appropriate to do spywork. She mentally names guards and weighs alliances, planning her next steps with caution. Cinder has the element of surprise on her side: Queen Levana has no idea that her compliant and obedient niece is starting to rebel right under her perfectly constructed nose.

She will need public support and she will have to work her way around her aunt: that means being respectful even though the spite burns her tongue. It means not attracting direct attention from the wolf-eves of the Queen Regent, and to seek help on her own. No more of waiting to be educated by her would-be usurper. Cinder lists all the access she is going to need if she has to pull this mad plan of hers off, and even if she can obtain some of it without gathering attention to herself, with the glamour of the innocent mechanic, there is no way she can do it on her own.

Maybe Jacin or Uncle Evret can help her there, she voices it. But no, that would be putting them in unnecessary risks. Cinder must protect her allies if she is to succeed.

Jacin cleans his throat and Cinder’s gaze drift toward him in a manner of seconds.

“I know of someone who can help, but she isn’t on the planet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again! we are almost finished with selene's first arc: only one more chapter left! however, i will be taking sometime off due to NaNoWriMo. (for those who don't know what NaNo is, is a writing challenge in which we have to write 50k words throughout November.) this is my first year and i'm crazy excited! i'll be fic-ing, although not The Lunar Chronicles related, and if anyone else in interested in being writing buddies, message me and i would love to!!! (i'll be writing in Portuguese, my native tongue, though, but for motivation we can always figure something out!!!)  
> finally, thank you guys so much for reading and putting up with me! i've been having crazy fun!


	9. person of interest

**eight - person of interest.**

Little Cress is winning at chess again. To be fair with her big sister, Cress is distracted by the scanning Mistress Sybil is making her do of the whole space surrounding Earth’s re-entrance area. There are lots of little satellites such as the very one Little Cress and her big sister live in all throughout the perimeter of the planet, but most are uninhabited: they are there for communication purposes, serving as a bridge between all the continents, conducting signals and transmissions with an ease that shows they have been doing it for ages, since way before the Third Era.

It is Little Cress’s job to find her way between the receivers of these transmissions, to compile data and pour it on Cress’s invisiscreens so her big sister can figure them out. Little Cress has been doing it every since she was born and made conscious by her big sister’s voice, that, at the time, was very much like her own. She is navigating through micro and macrowaves of energy and data, picking at firewalls and finding herself between the codes of different intelligence agencies, entertainment stations, music channels. Little Cress hums at the voice of an African singer, whose voice carries in syllables that have nothing to do with the common tongue.

Little Cress enjoys the song all the same, flooding the satellite with it and startling her big sister.

“Little Cress!” Cress’s voice is a little higher than usual, and Little Cress knows she’s surprised her big sister in the worst way possible, so she sets a lower volume for her Earthen music. Cress’s hands are already all through her hair, and she hugs her legs before she pushes the closest table and flies all across the room in her wheeled chair. “You scared me.”

“Sorry, Big Sister.”

“I know I’ve been neglecting our game, but now I am an international spy in a undercover mission, fishing for intelligence in a glamorous ball.” Cress giggles and taps a series of instructions in a screen made of glass. Little Cress beeps in recognition of the code and dives into her job with the focus of a machine.

Little Cress is looking for Lunar ships. Refugees, one might call them, fleeing Luna and searching for a better life down at Earth. Most of them are shells, like her big sister, and prefer risk burning on the Blue Planet’s atmosphere than living on the tunnels that run beneath Luna’s surface, never seeing the Sun’s light again.

Little Cress doesn’t understand the importance of Sun light completely, even though she is aware humans and Lunars need it to synthesize vitamin D that makes their bones strong. But when Little Cress’s big sister closes her eyes to feel the yellow light on her skin, it seems more than that. They never get more than a few minutes of Sun light at a time, and yet Cress always seems to enjoy every single second.

Carbon life-forms are strange, Little Cress thinks. Trees need light to convert inorganic matter onto energy, but Lunars and humans have to eat meat and vegetables and cereals. And yet, Cress’s humour is completely different when she has starlight.

Cress gives Little Cress new orders, and she divides herself between scanning Earth’s re-entrance area, compiling data and making graphs, estimating time of landing and noting the numbers marked on the ships’ hulls, and visiting New Beijing. It is not difficult, but the use of Little Cress’s RAM spike up, and she hums louder across the metal satellite.

“Data downloaded, Big Sister,” Little Cress announces cheerfully, making it rain ones and zeros into the software Cress has designed herself. They arrange themselves in a stream of soundless image and soon they are looking at New Beijing, at the Emperor and his son.

Little Cress has been travelling to the Eastern Commonwealth in her streams of electromagnetic pulses for quite sometime, since Mistress Sybil has given Cress a list of names of the Earthen leaders they are meant to keep their eyes and hardware on. She does as her sister commands her, but she is almost daily roaming the New Beijing Palace, listening to whispers and watching to meetings, telling Cress everything that is happening down on Earth.

Her big sister seems more interested in the shapes of the trees and the way people dress than on how much time they spend discussing budgets. Little Cress takes snapshots of everything her big sister demands: of leaders’ faces and inscriptions in well-lit panels, the layout of the residential wing of the New Beijing Palace, storms and snow. She piles all her pictures in folders that will be redirected towards Mistress Sybil, but her big sister has a secret stash of information that has nothing to do with their mission. Cress directs Little Cress, heavy with gigabytes of images, in the direction of those two directories and Little Cress, used to the task, helps her big sister to sort the images.

They work calmly, with Cress’s voice slipping from time to time in melodies that Little Cress has learned are from Luna and from Earth. Lullabies and children’s rhymes, operas and pop songs from Earth – all of it passes through Cress’s lips as she distracts herself as she works. Little Cress likes to listen to her big sister sing, and, when she is too tired to do it, Little Cress dives inside of her own musical repertoire and opens the speakers of their home, now with her big sister’s authorization, and soon enough music is pouring through all the places.

“Hmmm, what is Prince Kai doing?,” Cress wonders, zooming in a picture of the Crown Prince of the Eastern Commonwealth, dressed fully in gray and with a hooded head. Cress presses a button and another photo brightens the screen, of the prince leaving the palace on a hover. “Is he sneaking out?”

“He seems to be going into the city, Big Sister.”

“Do you have the times of his departure and his return?”

Little Cress searches for the information at her logs, but before she can present them to her big sister, her proximity sensors alert her, in big and red letters, that someone’s coming. And only one person ever comes to visit Little Cress and her big sister at this tiny satellite.

“Big Sister, Mistress is coming!” She remains calm, but her voice sparks up, and Cress’s eyes widen as she pushes herself to her feet. “Arrival in eighty-seven seconds.”

Little Cress has to close all the applications her big sister asks her to, and she promptly pulls images of surveillance into the main invisiscreens scattered throughout the tiny room. Then, her big sister asks her to turn down the music, to speak to her through text only, and Little Cress does as she is commanded. The ones and zeros that float across her code urge for Little Cress to be inconspicuous, so she puts herself in low-energy mode and wait for what her big sister will want to do next.

Cress, almost by her bed, pulls at her braids, making loops around her fingertips, dusting and tidying her dress so she can look more presentable. Her stomach is complaining and she can’t remember if she’s had breakfast once she woke up, but it is too late to think about these things now. Mistress Sybil won’t care, anyway, and Cress promises herself to get something to eat once Mistress is gone. She blinks once and twice, and as the satellite door swooshes to the side, she walks towards the noise of Mistress Sybil’s shoes at the metal floor.

“Welcome, Mistress!,” she greets, with a nervous smile, changing the weight of her body from one foot to the other. _Don’t look at the screens_ , Cress tells herself, _you’ll only look guilty if you do._ “Have you made a good trip?”

“Hello, Crescent.” Mistress Sybil’s eyes of fire are scanning the room with intent, looking for flaws and evidence that Cress is not doing her work properly. She sets her medical bag in Cress’s bed and ignores the question she’s been asked. “Give me your arm.”

“Already time for another sample, Mistress?,” Cress asks, in a small voice. As soon as she speaks, she wishes she’d been silent. The look on Mistress Sybil’s face makes the blood run towards Cress’s cheeks, and she only sits at her bed and gives out her right arm. “I’m terribly sorry, Mistress.”

Sybil clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes and soon the needle is at Cress’s elbow, taking advantage of the old wound that is already there from all the sampling Mistress takes from Cress. She doesn’t even wince anymore, and just bravely stares at the walls of her home, imagining she’s an Olympic athlete of the Second Era, being tested for illicit substances before she can perform. Cress would be an ideal gymnast, with her petit frame and incredible focus. Maybe she should get Little Cress to download some gymnastic samples, from when she is bored.

“There.” A vial full of Cress’s blood disappears inside Mistress Sybil’s bag and she gulps. Cress is used to the vibrant colour of her blood, but she still can’t help but wonder what Mistress Sybil wants to do with it. “Now, do you have any news for me, Crescent?”

Cress presses a ball of cotton on her hurt elbow and pushes herself to her feet, finding her chair and sliding to her working station. She removes Little Cress from her electronic slumber and pulls the images and videos that she knows would interest Mistress Sybil.

“Emperor Rikan has had another meeting with Earth’s leaders.”

“And we still have no way of entering that room?”

Cress bites her lip, knowing that Mistress Sybil will not like the news.

“I am afraid not, Mistress.” She looks down at her elbow, to make sure the bleeding has stopped, and throws the dirty ball of cotton down the garbage dispenser. “The equipment I have designed must be installed inside the room so we can hear what happens there. We have some close to it, but the Earthens have made precautions.” Cress tugs at one of her braids and dares not to look up to Sybil.

“Fine.” Mistress Sybil is scoffing as she looks to the footage Cress’s surveillance tech has assembled. “Transfer it.” Cress takes the portscreen from Mistress Sybil as delicately as she can. She plugs it at one of the USB ports and the transfer is done in seconds.

“There you have it, Mistress,” says Cress in her small voice again.

“Your supplies are at the disembark area. See you in a couple of weeks, Crescent.”

“Goodbye, Mistress.”

Cress stands up and walks Mistress Sybil to her tiny vessel, eyeing the packages of dry food and odourless soap. She hopes for new clothes – her dresses are too small for her now – and for some shears so she could shorten her hair. Cress knows none of that is in the small packs on the floor of her tidy hangar, but she still allows herself to hope. She sighs as the door closes behind Mistress Sybil and the ship detaches itself from the satellite and starts to swim into the blackness of space. She gathers the cloth bags and drags them into her room, unpacking and sorting its contents.

In the middle of some new underwear and hair ties, Cress finds a little black flashdrive. She turns it against the lights in her table, measuring it in her palm, squeaking as it captures and absorbs the lights. She brings Little Cress back to her talking self, and inserts the flashdrive onto the very same USB port she’s used to connect Sybil’s portscreen.

“Scanning complete. No malware detected.” Little Cress’s cheerful voice announces, and Cress sits straighter, her fingers already intertwined to her yellow hair. “Media found, Big Sister.”

“Play it, Little Cress.”

The invisiscreen turns into the other side of Cress’s wall for a second, and she tilts her head at the sight. She had equipped Little Cress with the best antivirus known to Earthens and Lunars, but still she feared she was being hacked. A chill crawls across Cress’s spine, and she realizes she is breathing heavily, completely anxious.

Her media player glitters and shows a very pixeled image of what seems to be a bathroom. Cress raises an eyebrow and steers her chair closer to the screen, blinking as the tanned face of a girl of her age comes to light. She has brown, straight hair and almond-shaped eyes, that make for a beautifully sketched frame. The poor lighting has her looking anywhere but the camera, and she seems to be walking to search for a better place to film.

When the girl sits on the bathroom floor, with a white cabinet to her back, she positions the camera further from her face and Cress gasps.

“Here is fine,” Princess Selene Blackburn says, and she handles the camera to someone else. “Hold it firmly, Winnie.”

“Yes, cousin.” The other voice is sweet like an Earthen singer, and Cress recognizes it instantly. _Princess Winter._

“Hello.” Princess Selene says, tugging at her hair and placing a lock of it behind her ear. “Aces, I don’t know how to do this.”

“You should’ve thought of it sooner, Princess,” snipes a third voice, a cold and clear one, of a boy. Princess Selene rolls her eyes at him and eyes the camera with an apologetic smile.

When she looks at the camera, she looks directly at Cress. Cress hugs her knees and her eyes widen.

“Hello,” she says again, and this time her prosthetic arm is clearly visible against the whiteness of the bathroom. “Miss Darnel, I believe you know who I am. But whenever one makes a new acquaintance, etiquette says one must introduce oneself. So I am Selene Blackburn, Crown Princess of Luna.” She pauses and takes a deep breath. “And I need your help.

“I’ve recently found out about my aunt’s... _policy_ towards shells. And her policies regarding all sort of subjects.” Selene shivers, and Cress mimics her. She has been battling for Queen Levana’s approval for ages, but the woman is strict and merciless. She can only imagine what it must be for Princess Selene, to live so closely to the queen. “Miss Darnel.” Selene pauses, and Cress can see the hesitation in her attentive eyes. Her gaze drifts for somewhere beyond the camera, and she seems to exchange looks with Princess Winter.

Cress hates to admit, but listening to Princess Selene calling her by name, and in such a respectful manner, sends goosebumps across her arms, and plasters a shy smile on her lips. Selene sighs and looks at the camera once again.

“Everything I say from this point on is confidential. Also, I feel like I have to tell you that I have programmed this flashdrive so its firmware will be automatically deleted once this video has been played once.” She catches her breath and Cress does the same. Whatever the princess says now, this is important. The flashdrive will be a useless piece of plastic once the video is over. Cress listens, attentively. “I need your help, Miss Darnel, to gather surveillance _inside_ Artemisia Palace.”

Princess Selene goes into deeper detail and Cress starts to take notes in her electronic notepad, her handwriting as messy as a child’s. She is nervous and she also doesn’t want to miss not a single one of Selene’s instructions. She introduces a Sir Jacin, Sybil’s pilot and the one responsible to sneaking the flashdrive into Cress’s supplies, and she gives Cress the details of how they will keep in touch from now on.

“That is, if you’ll help us,” Selene adds, at least. “I will not lie to you, Miss Darnel. What we are planning – this is treason. You might get in huge trouble for it if you get caught.” She looks towards the other people in the bathroom and rights herself before she goes on, “All of us will be. But I can promise you your freedom.” Princess Selene’s good hand gets transformed into a fist, and Cress is certain she is not imagining the sparkle of fury in her eyes. “It’ll take a little while longer, but we will get you out of that satellite, and bring justice to the shells. I intend for my reign to be a fair and peaceful one.”

Cress’s hands are trembling and Selene says her goodbyes and the screen turns transparent. She is also grinning, despite herself, and jumping back and forth with a new sense of purpose. She can almost imagine seeing Earth coming closer and closer as they approach its atmosphere, and to think of the Sun’s warmth against her pale skin... Cress makes her decision as easily as breathing.

“Problems of installation regarding directory C, Big Sister,” Little Cress lets her know, and she nods and disconnects the flashdrive, tossing it onto the garbage dispenser.

“Right, Princess,” she sighs, opening her coding software and reaching for one of her spare flashdrives in one of her numerous drawers. “Let’s do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and NaNoWriMo is over!!! (i didn't win it though :'( ) and i'm back with cress and i hope you guys liked it. see y'all soon :)))


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